LINE OF DUTY: cop-on-cop action TV procedural that demands analysis

also what bad guys are still using 1996 laptops rather than burner Androids with Signal

Oh yes, can't have been buckles!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK5o3yRwhMQ

xp boomers

Now gagging to read the John Lanchester novelisation: "As DS Ian Buckles switched on his personal laptop computer and opened the secure messaging application he had installed on it..."

I don't know much about these things but 'IP' is very often used to indicate 'Intellectual Property'. I think I sometimes get confused about this.

You're not the only one
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/uk-govt-ip-address-is-intellectual-property-address.ars

I'm guessing any organised crime gang that relied on Buckles probably wasn't that shit-hot on cybersecurity?

Personally I enjoyed the anticlimatic H reveal but not entirely convinced about how Buckles manages to be (a) a useless ne'er-do-well and (b) the lightning-reflexed overseer of the LOD panopticon at the same time

ILX poster Luna Schlosser queried whether LoD was great UK TV, and suggested it was overvalued due to hysteria.

I disavow the hysteria, but on reflection one can at least be more precise about placing the programme in TV drama history.

Say at one end you have soaps: EASTENDERS and BROOKSIDE have been the best known to me; such programmes now seem to go out c.5 nights a week, unthinkable when I was a child.

And at another end you have one-off dramas, TV films. The BBC4 biopics (Cilla Black, Kenneth Williams) would be examples, but there must be others that would seem less generic.

Close to this end you have single series, usually no more than 6 episodes. That would include BLACKSTUFF and EDGE OF DARKNESS, which I am content to think of as benchmarks. It would also include adaptations eg: the 1994 MIDDLEMARCH. In fact between this category and one-off dramas you also have short series, eg: a two-part adaptation of something.

Then back towards the soaps you have recurring series, which are rarer than soaps but that keep coming back over years. SPOOKS, PEAKY BLINDERS, LUTHER would be examples. CASUALTY would be an extreme example: it started in 1986 and has had 35 series !! I suppose most of the famous acclaimed US TV programmes like BREAKING BAD, GAME OF THRONES are technically like this too. Presumably so is SHERLOCK, but SHERLOCK is an unusual example of playing a 'quality card' by having long episodes (90 minutes?) and not making many of them - scarcity as value - so it feels very different from CASUALTY et al.

LoD belongs in this bracket. I think it is the best drama of that kind (recurring series) that I can remember in the UK (but not the best in the world). I think it is also better than lots of programmes in the 'less frequent' categories, eg: many of us would agree that it's better than lots of BBC biopics.

I sense that two things that make LoD seem better than the average series in its category are:
a) the innovation of the interview / interrogation as an intense, extended format, which LoD has deliberately made a trademark
b) Adrian Dunbar bringing grain.

I think that without these two elements, it would seem more like an average recurring police procedural series.

I would add c) a near constant moral vertigo as alliances and alibis shift almost by the episode, making every single character's motives questionable. You don't get that in Inspector Morse.

Yes, I think one could also add the tendency to sudden shocks, major character deaths, etc, mentioned by Mark S at the very start of this thread -- I think that is a big feature of LoD that may have become normalised / more taken for granted than it was.

The start of the thread always puts me off because of the bad and mistaken reference to Cary Grant. I preferred Mark's long-ago comparison of Elvis Costello to Bryan Ferry, unconvincing as it probably was.

re the Quality Television question (which goes at least as far back as MTM and HILL STREET BLUES) and LoD, I realise that a relevant factor at the back of my mind has always been that the LRB (!!) ran a little article on LoD, in a way that it has rarely done for other programmes in this format (or for most TV in truth).

Or did it? Now that I search, I can't find it.

One thing that distinguishes it from other British series is that right from the start it assimilated visceral violence in a way that hadn't been seen before quite like it on British TV I think. This still makes me pause: for example in series 4 when the disturbing forensics guy is astride an unconscious DCI Huntley preparing to carve her up - I do have thoughts of "Is my life so barren and empty I need this kind of hard core shock for entertainment?". But at the same time I have to recognise that LOD does this well, mostly - and this is part of its appeal for me.

Are you kidding? UK cop series aren't commissioned these days if they don't have at least one gruesome autopsy scene per episode.

That's on top of all the other gratuitously violent scenes they have.

You could be right. I graduated to LoD via The Bill without dabbling in the wider murky waters of the Uk crime drama world and the autopsy sub-genre.

Missing from pinefox's list (I think?) are recurring series that don't have storylines that carry from one episode to the next - which is how most crime series used to be. So, ironically, The Bill is actually closer to Line of Duty than something like The Sweeney.

The Bill did once have semi-comedic episode centred around the severed finger of a criminal in a jar of pickled onions. That was probably my fave ep.

Yeah, Cracker (early 90s) had its fair share of visceral violence and there's probably plenty of others

I sense that two things that make LoD seem better than the average series in its category are:
a) the innovation of the interview / interrogation as an intense, extended format, which LoD has deliberately made a trademark
b) Adrian Dunbar bringing grain.

Prime Suspect was the front runner for both on these IMHO.

The early Prime suspects were multi episode series, based on a single crime where they often catch the perpetrator very early on, and the rest is all about making the evidence stick and the long interrogation scenes, with new evidence changing the dynamic within the interrogation room throughout the episodes.

Helen Mirren was also bringing the grain in SPADES.

the later series' had a crime per episode which watered everything down for a 'all resolved before you go to bed on a Sunday' experience. IIRC

Where LoD works is that the perpetrators are often police who have interrogation training, so it chances the dynamic, with all the one rank senior business. That's where its strength was.

A nice mix of both styles was S4: where it was all cop on cop action but there was no doubt on the crime, it was about can they find the evidence?

One thing that distinguishes it from other British series is that right from the start it assimilated visceral violence in a way that hadn't been seen before quite like it on British TV I think. This still makes me pause: for example in series 4 when the disturbing forensics guy is astride an unconscious DCI Huntley preparing to carve her up - I do have thoughts of "Is my life so barren and empty I need this kind of hard core shock for entertainment?". But at the same time I have to recognise that LOD does this well, mostly - and this is part of its appeal for me.

Tend to agree with Luna Schlosser here, and note that violence is surely not the same as autopsy?

In that scene it's surely relevant that the perp *doesn't* carve Huntley up, but is in fact killed by her - the shock is her waking up.

THE BRIDGE also has a recurring forensic / autopsy person who is proudly training Saga to examine dead bodies.

Tom D: are you saying that THE BILL used to have continuing storylines? I'd have thought that was rare and it was usually self-contained per episode. I did use to like this programme a lot!

Hamildan's post is good, and well-informed, though I don't remember there being no doubt re the crime in S4 - maybe there were multiple crimes?

It's true, as Hamildan says, that *procedure* is a bit part of the appeal, cf 'one rank senior' and even the sound of the tape starting.

I think CRACKER and subsequent McGovern work also missing from the PF list. Haven't watched it since it was broadcast, but my memory is it did a better job of teasing out the resonance of individual crimes/broader socio-political context than LoD?

Sorry I see the Groovypanda already noted this :)

Tom D: are you saying that THE BILL used to have continuing storylines? I'd have thought that was rare and it was usually self-contained per episode. I did use to like this programme a lot!

iirc it had, for instance, a long running storyline on a bad/bent cop and whether or not they'd get their comeuppance - in fact, I'm sure it did that more than once because soap opera fans love their baddies.

iirc it started out as self-contained episodes and the other thing that made it unique initially was that it didn't show the cops' private lives at all. But both of those principles were jettisoned in the chase for ratings.

I'd say Happy Valley is superior but there's only been 2 series. In fact watching Happy Valley led me to Line of Duty which I'd ignored thinking it was just some conventional Brit police procedural

Anagram: yes that's a good point re: excluding the private lives - I seem to remember that as part of its bold schtick.

re CRACKER or other McGovern: I don't have the expertise on them that others do -- my typology above was purely formalist; from that POV, the question is just what format they are, what kind of story / series / how many episodes / self-contained films etc.

CRACKER:

50 mins. (Series 1–3)
120 mins. (Specials)

25 episodes !!

Docudramas like McGovern's about Hillsborough would come in as 'prestige one-off 90-minute dramas' -- or even in some cases, 2-parters?

The pinefox should give up on LRB posting and just post full time about TV imo

The Bill did stick with an episodic format for many years, but by the early 2000s it was pretty much a full-on soap with all the absurd storylines that entails, the peak of which was probably an incest storyline involving Mark Fowler off of Eastenders seducing Sgt Ackland (who turned out to be his estranged mum).

There were numerous "bad copper" storylines throughout it's run, Don Beech, Eddie Santini, Des Taviner, etc. It was pretty much a constantly recurring trope in later years.

xpost: strong agree. Suggest the PF begins fortwith on an episode-by-episode voyage through all 801 episodes of Z-CARS (1962-1978).

Don Beech murdering DS Boulton was very much in the LOD style of bad cops.

LADS JED IS TWEETING THROUGH IT

1. No one disputes the Line of Duty finale divided social media opinion but the audience research so far shows a far less extreme picture. We knew a "down" ending would rate less favourably with some viewers, however all 7 episodes varied by under 10% on average viewer score ...

— Jed Mercurio (@jed_mercurio) May 5, 2021

2. The research determines the episode ratings based on randomly polling viewers, rather than sites like imdb where scores can be skewed by users strongly motivated to register their immediate anger/adulation …

— Jed Mercurio (@jed_mercurio) May 5, 2021

3. 1000 random viewers submitted scores from 1-10 which have been used to calculate the Appreciation Index (AI) as a score out of 100. The AI for the “down” finale was only 7 points below the next lowest in Season 6 (Ep 1) …

— Jed Mercurio (@jed_mercurio) May 5, 2021

4/4 These figures won’t stop the debate, of course, nor should they - that’s still all part of the experience of shared TV viewing. Thanks again for watching.

— Jed Mercurio (@jed_mercurio) May 5, 2021

Also Martin Compston has been annyoing Tories by suggesting people vote SNP.

A nice mix of both styles was S4: where it was all cop on cop action but there was no doubt on the crime, it was about can they find the evidence?

I definitely prefer crime dramas where the identity of the perpetrator is not in doubt. As someone said when talking about Sherlock Holmes, unless you're as good as Arthur Conan Doyle (and you're probably not) you come up with a solution to a whodunnit that is both satisfying and unguessable, so you're better off not bothering. But it obviously makes it much easier to promote a programme to a wide audience, so I can imagine there would be enormous pressure to craft it that way.

I watched an absolutely awful Lynda La Plante yoke called Killer Net (1998) the other day, for reasons. It was soooooo sloooooowwww, it was painful. One of the things I really value about LoD is the briskness of it. You probably couldn't have got away with it before subtitling and pause/rewind on broadcast telly, but it really keeps everything trotting along nicely.

wrt to violence in LOD, I think it's fair to say it's not really the same kind of violence as other UK police dramas, many of which have had grisly murders and autopsy scenes (there's a particularly nasty early Taggart involving chainsaw killings that shit me up when I was wee). In LOD it's more like sudden shocking moments of brutality that seem to come out of nowhere, which I think helped give the show a sense of danger and unpredictability in it's early years(although definitely something it lost in the transition from cult status on BBC2 to massive mainstream success on BBC1).

The other aspect that stands out is the over-arching conspiracy meta-narrative, which is something I can't really recall having been done in another UK police drama, at least not to the extent that it's been carried through in LOD. Most UK shows in this genre are either mainly episodic or deal with a single case which is resolved at the end of each series and not referred to again.

Wasn't Wire In The Blood quite gruesome? I'm sure there were loads of this ilk around that time but can't remember them all!

In pace and tone (though it differs in many other ways), the show LoD most reminds me of is 24.

I agree with Pheeel and the switch from BBC2 to BBC1 is a good point to remember about LoD -- I only remembered it the other day when looking at ratings, which doubled when it went to BBC1 after, was it 3 seasons?

I can't pause or rewind my TV but I watch every episode of LoD at least twice via iPlayer, second time often with subtitles nowadays.

I'm surprised that Mercurio is responding to critics, but if he's going to do that kind of thing I hope he can find a way to justify Kate fleeing the scene between 6:5 and 6:6. This may well have been covered on this thread when I wasn't reading it (to avoid spoiler ideas etc), but it seems the worst piece of plotting ever on LoD, and the one thing that brought down this series.

btw I've started watching Cardiac Arrest and it unfortunately has a lot in common with Garth Merengi's Dark Place, production-wise at least. I'm only at the start but I feel like Bodies did this sort of thing but a lot slicker.

Many XPS but re Cracker I think there was a single case to solve per series and also long term story arcs over the whole thing.

I was in uni so a lot of the time watching I was high but do remember some of it being the most intense TV I'd ever seen (at the time) especially the Robert Carlyle/ Christopher Eccleston denouement

It was massively popular anyway but imagine if social media was a thing then it would have generated similar levels of tweets as LOD does now

Cracker was episodic in terms of structure(several multi-episode stories per series) but it did have character threads that carried across episodes, Fitz and his marriage woes, Penhaligon and Jimmy Beck, etc.

LOD feels to me much more akin to a much smaller scale version of something like Lost, with each tidbit of new info seemingly designed to be pored over endlessly and fuel online speculation and fan-theorising. Which can be a lot of fun to be a part of, don't get wrong, but it can lead to disappointment when what happens on screen inevitably fails to live up to the obsessive theory-crafting.

I'm sure Cracker would have a big online following if it was around now, but I'm not sure McGovern would be interested in pandering to those kind of viewer expectations in the same way.

IIRC Robbie Coltrane has always been Fleming-level wooden in straight roles

Pheeel: FWIW it seems reasonable to say that LoD has grown, or degenerated, towards that kind of 'online fan service', as media has worked symbiotically (ie: endless tweeting about TV, podcasts about TV, etc) -- but it can't have started that way -- when it was (by definition) an unknown programme, that was originally inspired by the de Menezes / Cressida Dick scandal (as I recall).

I think there is a tranche of programmes that works very strongly that way ie: SHERLOCK, DR WHO, and LoD may have been tempted to move in that direction (everyone waiting for Ted to say 'bent coppers') -- but my sense is that that's a relatively recent development. Maybe the move from BB2 to BBC1 would be key.

FWIW also I can very much understand being drawn into watching LoD that way (reading tweets about theories all week, etc), but I would avoid it myself; think it would spoil it (thus I avoided this thread also).

Pheeel: FWIW it seems reasonable to say that LoD has grown, or degenerated, towards that kind of 'online fan service', as media has worked symbiotically (ie: endless tweeting about TV, podcasts about TV, etc) -- but it can't have started that way -- when it was (by definition) an unknown programme, that was originally inspired by the de Menezes / Cressida Dick scandal (as I recall).

I think there is a tranche of programmes that works very strongly that way ie: SHERLOCK, DR WHO, and LoD may have been tempted to move in that direction (everyone waiting for Ted to say 'bent coppers') -- but my sense is that that's a relatively recent development. Maybe the move from BB2 to BBC1 would be key.

Oh, I agree it wasn't originally like that at all. I started watching during Season 2 and at that point it seemed like hardly anyone was watching or commenting online.

It was around Season 4 things started to move that way, that was when the Guardian started doing weekly recaps and the comment sections underneath each article would go absolutely mental every week.

Sorry, meant to put that in quotes

Just watched 6:7 again. Think I understand it better. Still think it was superb.

A fact I can confirm: subtitles say "Holte End Holdings"; Buckells is Villa fan.

Then again subtitles also say that Kate accuses him of driving "dud cars" when she seems, aloud, to say "dad cars" (I've now heard that line 3 times).

Haha, I totally heard dad cars.

im pretty sure it was dad cars.

don’t steal my idea ok but what if there was a show about a cop who’s bad at having a wife, but good, at being a police

— rax ‘preorder TACKY 💋’ king (@RaxKingIsDead) May 5, 2021